Puzzles

The current aim is to introduce a weekly puzzle. If you have any puzzles (or articles) that you wish to submit then you can try emailing webamster@boardability.com

Weights 2

Like the problem that we faced at Easter. This time can you find the bag of false coins. You have an old fashioned "weigh yourself machine" which will tell you how much you weigh to the nearest gram with for a single coin. The problem is you only have one coin of the right denomination.

There are 10 bags with many coins in them. All the coins in each bag are of the same type so either all fake or all real. Real coins weight 10g each and fake coins 11g. Can you find which bag contains the fake coins in one weighing?

Making Shapes

This week there are two questions. The matchsticks are all of equal length. You are allowed to let matches touch but they cannot cross another match.

Firstly, what is the fewest number of matches that you need to form 4 equalateral triangles of the same size?
Secondly, how many matches do you need to make 8 squares of the same size?

Tessellation

This week you have 7 different coloured pieces of chalk (long narrow cylinders). What is the biggest group of these chalks that can be made so that every colour touches a chalk of every other colour in the group? And what does this arrangement look like? You are not allowed to break the chalks or use more than the 7 chalks of each colour.

Sequences

Today's problems are in keeping with the kind of puzzles that you see from Mensa and
realise that IQ puzzles are different from intelligence so apologies in advance...

Can you find the fake Easter Egg with just 3 weighings?

Every detail of the fakes was nearly perfect but they had a slightly different weight to the chocolate ones. To make matters far worse, you realise that your friend has gathered 11 unsold easter eggs that look identical to yours and taken them to a shop store room. But they have also taken one of your fakes. You jump in your car racing to the store room to recover your egg. Now you realise you are going to have to buy the fake egg but you only have enough money to buy one.

You have to find the egg without being detected or all your schemes will be ruined. Luckily, there is an old fashioned pan scale. This allows you to determine if one side is heavier as it will go down and the other side up. The next problem is that the pan has been out in the sun and if you make more than 3 tries you will melt the eggs.